Now that the holiday season is here with us, quite a number of us will be making the long (or short) trips back home to celebrate with our families. While there, depending on where exactly that is, there’s the odd chance that a strong network signal may not be available to allow you to catch up on whatever it is you were already watching before the holidays or sample something new.
That is not going to be a problem for Showmax subscribers who, as we will see briefly, have an option to take with them their favourite movies, documentaries and television shows everywhere they go, in the quality they desire for as much as a month, more than the time most of us will be spending in shagz.
So, how do you go about doing that?
Easy.
1. Get a Showmax subscription. That is a very easy thing to do. Go to the Showmax website and sign up then proceed to pay (preferably via M-Pesa but there are other payment options as well if that is what you’d like). Better yet, you could still tell us one unique feature of the Showmax mobile app and we’ll get you started with a voucher thanks to our friends at Showmax.
2. Download and install the said Showmax mobile app. If you’re on Android, and we hope you are, you can get the application on Google Play. Then sign in using the credentials from step 1 above.
3. Once signed in, navigate to any TV show, movie or documentary episode, click on the three buttons and, in the dropdown (see screenshot below), select Download. That’s it. That particular episode (if it is a series) or movie is then downloaded to your device and can be accessed any time either directly or through the Download tab on the Showmax app. You just need to make sure you have enough storage. In instances where that is a concern, you can step down the video resolution so that a smaller file is downloaded instead.
There are some things worth noting before you embark on your download spree:
- You can only download up to 25 titles. What that means is that at any given time, you can only have 25 pieces of content downloaded to your device for offline viewing. That could be a few episodes of some series, a few movies, whatever, you can do 25 at any given time. Depending on where you sit and your viewing habits, that may be a little or just enough. Personally, that’s a sweet spot as that’s right about the number of Grey’s Anatomy episodes in a single season. Seeing as it is that I’ll be home to meet people I haven’t seen in a while as well as using the holiday to read a book or two, it’s a good balance for a week or two. But that’s me, maybe your experience is different? We’ll await your comment.
- Downloading content for offline viewing is only possible on mobile devices, not on your desktop computer.
- As already noted, you can adjust the resolution of the video content being downloaded from standard definition to high definition as you please. This is particularly important if you’re not using Wi-Fi to download content as mobile data bundle costs can be prohibitive if you intend on downloading an entire series season. Or, in case you are using one of these low-cost devices we have had a look at this year like the Android Go-powered Tecno Spark 2, the Huawei Y5 Prime 2018 among others.
- Downloaded content is valid for a month i.e. 30 days. That’s much longer than the validity of content you can download on other platforms like, say, YouTube.
